Consumers are bombarded with warnings about identity theft threats ranging from mailbox thieves and lost laptops to the higher-tech methods of e-mail scams and corporate data invasions. Now, experts are warning that photocopiers could be a culprit as well.

That's because most digital copiers manufactured in the past five years have disk drives — the same kind of data-storage mechanism found in computers — to help reproduce documents. As a result, the seemingly innocuous machines that are commonly used to spit out copies of sensitive information such as tax returns or legal documents can retain the data being scanned.

If the information on the copier's disk isn't protected with encryption or an overwrite mechanism, and if someone with malicious motives gets access to the machine, industry experts say sensitive information from original documents could get into the wrong hands.

Although industry and security experts were unable to point to any known incidents of identity thieves using copiers to steal information, they said the potential was very real.

Daniel Katz-Braunschweig, a chief consultant at DataIXL, a business consulting firm, includes digital copiers among his list of data holes corporations should try to protect. He couldn't specify names, but said a few of his company's clients learned about the vulnerability after their copiers were resold and the new owners — in good faith — notified them of the data residing on the disks.

"It is a valid concern and most people don't know about it," said Keith Kmetz, analyst at market researcher IDC. "Copying wasn't like this before."

Paul DeMatteis, a security consultant and teacher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, added: "We know there are bad people out there. Just because this is difficult to detect doesn't mean it isn't being exploited."

Some copier makers are now adding security features, but many of the digital machines already found in public venues or business offices are likely still open targets, said Ed McLaughlin, president of Sharp Document Solutions Company of America.

'You actually have a better chance at winning 10 straight rolls of roulette than getting those hard drives on copiers rewritten.'—Ed McLaughlin, Sharp Document Solutions Company of America

"You actually have a better chance at winning 10 straight rolls of roulette than getting those hard drives on copiers rewritten," he said.

Consumers unaware of risk

Sharp, a maker of photocopiers, commissioned a consumer survey in January in the U.S. that indicated more than half of respondents did not know copiers carried this data security risk. The telephone survey of 1,005 adults showed that 55 per cent planned to make copies of their tax returns and related documents, and of that segment, half planned to make the copies outside their homes — at offices, libraries and copy shops. An additional 13 per cent said they planned to have their tax preparers make copies.

Xerox Corp., another major photocopier manufacturer, said in October it would start making a feature that encrypts and overwrites images scanned to the hard drive standard across all of its digital copiers. Sharp offers a similar kit for its machines.

Randy Cusick, a technical marketing manager at Xerox, said many entities dealing with sensitive information, such as government agencies, financial institutions, and defense contractors, already have policies to make sure copier disks themselves or the data stored on them are secured or not unwittingly passed along in a machine resale.

Smaller businesses and everyday consumers are less likely to know about the risk, but should, he said.